1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a method and a program for combining to output a plurality of items of content.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system exists, which automatically selects a replay file in response to a replay characteristic from a plurality of media files having practically identical items of medium content. Meanwhile, techniques, automatically recommending content by using histories and metadata, have been mounted on products such as a DVD recorder, and have become existing techniques.
However, these techniques have not been developed on the assumption the case that disables these techniques from acquiring the media files and the content, but they have been developed with a focus on how to use a plurality of already obtained items of content (see, e.g., JP-A 2008-152259(KOKAI)).
In equipment for combining the service content of a plurality of right holders in accordance with a certain script, there is a possibility of solely a part of items of the content suddenly becoming unusable. It is conceivable, as a cause, that a content provider stops providing a service temporarily or permanently, or the content becomes unusable because of a change in the content use condition (e.g., contract content or usage fee). If a script provider and a content provider are different from each other, there is such a problem that the script provider cannot recognize in advance to be not able to use the content.
However, in the foregoing conventional techniques, content managers, deciders of content to be reproduced, and recommenders are all the same. That is, when reproducing the content, since acquisition situations of the content are self-evident, the conventional techniques have not been developed on the assumption that the conventional techniques have been disabled from acquiring the content during replay.